Finding Forward
March 14
Justice Alan Page joins St. Thomas President Rob Vischer for a conversation about leadership and collaboration in an age of polarization.
Event Details
March 14, 2024
Finding Forward was conceived as a way to break through the divisions in our society right now that keep us from dialogue and connection. Justice Alan Page joins St. Thomas President Rob Vischer for a conversation about leadership and collaboration in an age of polarization.
4:30-6:30 p.m.
O’Shaughnessy Educational Center (OEC) Auditorium
St. Paul Campus, University of St. Thomas
Event is free for all guests (both in-person and via livestream!).
Complimentary light hors d'ouevres, and a cash bar, will be provided at the in-person event.
Parking is in Anderson Parking Facility. The cost of visitor parking is $2.10/hour before 4 p.m. and $1.55/hour after 4 p.m.
Video Recording Available Now
March 14
Presenters
Justice Alan Page
President Rob Vischer
In Conversation: Alan Page
Law was Page’s second career; he was first known for his skills in football both in college and in the NFL. At Notre Dame, Alan Page led the school’s storied football program to the 1966 national championship, and in 1993 he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
He was a first-round draft choice of the Minnesota Vikings in 1967 and he played for the Vikings until 1978. The last three years of his football career were with the Chicago Bears, 1978-1981. During his career, Alan Page played in 218 consecutive games, earning All-Pro honors six times, and was voted to nine consecutive Pro Bowls. In 1971 he was named the NFL’s Most Valuable Player, becoming only the second defensive player in history to be named MVP. In 1988 he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame and in 2019 he was chosen as a member of the NFL’s 100th Anniversary All-Time Team.
Also in 1988, Alan Page and his wife Diane founded the Page Education Foundation, which assists Minnesota students of color in their pursuit of post-secondary education. To date, the foundation has awarded $17 million in grants to more than 8,500 students.
In June 2017, after a campaign initiated by students at Alexander Ramsey Middle School in Minneapolis, the school’s name was changed to Justice Page Middle School.
In November 2018, Justice Page received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
A new elementary school named “Justice Alan Page Elementary School” opened in 2022 in Maplewood, Minnesota.
Justice Page and his daughter, Kamie Page, have written four children’s picture books, Alan and His Perfectly Pointy Impossibly Perpendicular Pinky (2013), The Invisible You (2014), Grandpa Alan’s Sugar Shack (2017), and Bee Love (Can Be Hard) (2020).
Page was born in Canton, Ohio and graduated from Canton Central Catholic High School in 1963, received his B.A. in political science from the University of Notre Dame in 1967, and received his J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1978. After graduating from law school, Alan Page worked as an attorney for a law firm in Minneapolis, then served seven years as an attorney in the office of the Minnesota Attorney General.
In Conversation: Rob Vischer
In nearly 10 years as dean of the St. Thomas School of Law, Vischer has helped leverage the law school's mission to achieve critical objectives in student success and community impact. Over the course of his deanship, the law school has dramatically improved employment outcomes for its graduates, built a global student body by establishing partnerships with law schools in more than a dozen countries, redoubled its commitment to whole-person professional formation, maintained its top-25 ranking for scholarly impact, and made racial justice core to its mission. The Harvard Law School graduate was an inaugural recipient of the Minnesota Lawyer Diversity and Inclusion Award for his contributions to the advancement of diversity and inclusion in the practice of law.
Before entering the legal academy, Vischer was associated with Kirkland & Ellis in Chicago, where he practiced corporate litigation. He clerked for three federal judges: Judge David Ebel of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Joan Gottschall of the Northern District of Illinois, and Judge John Wiese of the Court of Federal Claims. He received his B.A. degree, summa cum laude, from the University of New Orleans, and his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
About Finding Forward
Building trust, overcoming differences and breaking through standstills. It’s not something that happens enough in society today, but it’s the primary aim of a new speaker series that Minnesota’s largest private university is hosting with the region’s largest media outlet. Finding Forward, hosted by the University of St. Thomas and the Star Tribune, will engage experts on a range of important issues that seemingly have society stuck in neutral due to partisan debates, inabilities to find common ground and an unwillingness to see competing perspectives.